Random Pet Challenge [v3.0]

[starkittens]

(ok, here's mine,)

Walking along the narrow cliff overlooking the water, i realize how much trouble i'm in, walking along this cliff, when i can't swim. as i walk along, out of nowhere this rattling Noise starts up. As i wildly look around to see where it is coming from, this wild thing comes out of the cliff, and wraps its self around me. Not knowing what it was, and not knowing what else to do, i start screaming my head off. The thing lets go of me, and as i turn around, i see it's just a snake, a very playful one at that. She Flicks her tongue out at me a couple times, then decides to follow me and be my friend. As i continue my journey along the cliff, with the snake following, the snake makes more playful attempts to get my attention. Then, all of a sudden, She gives out a sharp hiss, making me turn and look at her. As i start to turn back, she leaps onto me, and the part of the cliff face i was on falls away. The snake, which i decide to name Fireback, Keeps me from getting hurt, but gets hurt herself. But, even though she's hurt, she still carries me though the water, over to a little floating piece of junk. Also on the piece of junk,was a turtle, and a strange "ghost troll" She quickly Drove the turtle off, lunging at it and doing bites, with a spit too. As i wait for help to come, i sit with Fireback, Something about her, says that she's just here to Have some fun, but would like to go back to her cliff face. So i let her go. She may have saved my life, and she'll probably save more now.


(her tongue flick idle move)


(her saving my life/ swimming)


(our happy little island)

Again?
Name:Starkittens
Level: 81
Exotics: Bring it on!
Restrictions: none

[starkittens]

ok, ok, i know this would be for sara's tame, but i couldn't help but to go and try to find the one(s) in winterspirng, this is what i found




oh. my. god. IT'S SOOOOOO CUTE!!!

[Sarantha]

White fox. Found one in, of course, Winterspring. She has really cute overall animations and her play is really adorable. These snowfrolic foxes run really fast and it took a bit of running to catch up to one, but I did. Here's some cutsie pics:





Using the "Play" option, she does a little dance:



Idle animation is the usual dog-scratching-for-fleas animation, along with sniffing the ground:



Combat. Katiya vs a Molten Giant. You'd think the tiny fox would be at a disadvantage, but she solos him just fine without even going below half health:



Katiya and Sara in Winterspring again:



I like this little fox. She's fierce and adorable. I would keep her, and I might retame her if I can't find a permanent final pet to click with, since I really did bond with this little thing during the short time I've had her. Her animations, even her combat animations, are just so damned adorable that no pet can beat a fox in a cuteness match, I think. Excepting perhaps Karkin, who is the cutest effin thing ever created by Blizzard.

Name: Sarantha
Level: 85
Exotics: Yes
Restrictions: No monkeys/gorillas, rhinos, or boars.

[starkittens]

well, i think your cub is trying to be cute too.

[TygerDarkstorm]

Starkittens:
Grey Gorilla


Sarantha:
Tan Bat

[starkittens]

Hacking and slashing my way through this think and dense jungle, I stumble out into a clearing, Full of monkeys. "Monkeys....why Monkeys." i say. Seems that Gorillas Don't like to be called monkeys, for they started chasing me. As i twist and turn through the dense jungle, i pick up other predators Who are happy to chase me, for a bite of my moo cow flesh. Sprinting out of the jungle, i am forced to make a sudden stop, for i'm at the top of a cliff, one that if i fall down, there will be no spirit run back to my body. I hear my pursers coming out of the jungle behind me,
As i turn around, ready to face my enemies, I see that's it's only a few apes, but, one is coming up behind, and slams into One of the other apes, pounding, and pummeling the angry ape to near death. The other apes went down easier, till it was just me, and the last ape. As the ape takes a step forward, i take one back, and fall. I shut my eyes, to prevent me from seen the horrors of my death, but, i dont feel any of the bone breaking crunches, In stead, i feel something grab my wrist, and haul me up. When i open up my eyes, i am staring into the eyes of the Ape. The ape, looks as though it wanted to be my friend, But only to keep me out of trouble.

As i go to get on the boat, heading back home. The ape, which i named SilverFire, Stayed behind. Looks like, She only wanted to keep me out of trouble while i was in her forest.

Again?
Name: Starkittens
Level: 83 (but you can roll me 85 stuff)
exotics: Bring it on!
Restrictions: please, no lv 85 rares. i don't feel like camping

[Sarantha]

Tan Bat. I honestly hate bats, and forgot to put them on my restrictions, but now I do remember Tyger saying that more restrictions make it harder for her to do the rolls, so I won't put bats in my restrictions this time, but I really do hate them. I set out to tame this pet anyway. I found one in the Plaguelands. Noxious Plaguebat. Bats are honestly fugly as hell. The only good thing about them is their Sonic Blast ability, which is like a built in charge for a cunning pet:





After tame. I named her Lanathel after the vampire blood elf queen in Icecrown. I hated that boss, so it seemed fitting for a pet I also disliked:



Back and side shot of Lana. She's really rather ugly from BOTH sides:



Lana and Sara. I honestly did not even leave the Plaguelands with this pet. I attacked a few mobs to see what her combat animations were like, but it was nothing great, so I didn't bother taking pics of those:



Bleargh. I can see what use bats might be to people in pvp due to their ability to stun that doesn't come from talents, but other than that I see nothing in a bat that I can't get with a much better looking pet. It might be vain of me to say this, but I really hate bats and I will be releasing Lanathel almost immediately. She'll stick with me through a BG or two just to play with her stun a bit, but I already know there are pets with stuns that I like much more than Lanathel. I am not a fan of bats, IRL or in game. I hated Blood Queen Lanathel because they made her look like some kind of bat-slut and her fight was really annoying, so thats why she got that name. Definitely give me another. I am removing boars from restrictions and replacing them with bats. At least some boars are cute enough to tame and keep, like the ones in Shadowmoon valley with the spikes.

Name: Sarantha
Level: 85
Exotics: Yes
Restrictions: No monkeys/gorillas, rhinos, or bats.

[Talody]

Starting with Jandos.

Jandos' challenge was either Old Beaky or Gezzarak the Huntress ("Black" warpstalker skin), I opted for Gezzarak, since I'm working on Skygaurd rep and figured getting the materials for the summon would help the rep grind. First I gathered dust to trade for the potion, then drank the potion and killed the time lost guys for the scrolls. 10 scrolls later I was at a pile of skulls to do the summoning.

I remembered waaaay back when hunters trying to tame Gezzarak, all talking about haste and needing a healer. . .basically going through hell to tame her. Silly me, I figure my level, a food buff, small haste trinket and 10sec tame cast would be enough. Gezzarak very quickly proved me wrong by knocking me out of my tame and curbstomping me. After rezzing, I ran to the AH to get anything with a haste buff I could, and tamed a corehound for Ancient Hysteria. I'm guessing Gezzarak wanted to teach me some humility before allowing herself to be tamed.



Since her low to the ground run animation reminded me of my leopard gecko, I named her Scribble, after my gecko.



Such pretty colors! Defiantly purple, and not black. A charming, toothy smile too.



It didn't take me long to realize I was quite taken with my little, lizard tank. We ran quests and took down elite mobs no problem. I'm amazed at how I went from uncertainty about warp stalkers to head over heels for Scribble. The one disappointment I had was discovering that they no longer teleport, but instead have a slow. Teleport or no, Scribble is a keeper.



Lael's report will come soon, still working out what I think of the serpent.

[Nemestrinus]

Name: Nemestrinus
Level: 17 (though I am actively leveling, so a pet in their upper 20s would be okay)
Exotics: Can't!
Restrictions: edit - I did have the pets I have listed here, but then I realized that since I don't mind taming another one that I have and doing a review on it, doesn't make much sense to list them here!

[TygerDarkstorm]

but now I do remember Tyger saying that more restrictions make it harder for her to do the rolls

A couple of restrictions isn't a big deal. My rolls often have said "No monkies/gorillas" because I absolutely cannot stand them. If you completely loathe a pet, you loathe a pet. It's not that people having restrictions limits the system--it's when people say "You can't roll anything that I already have in my stable" or "You have to give me a pet that fits x and y requirement/theme/idea/etc." At that point I have to start choosing pets by hand, which, at least for me, isn't always as fun as seeing what the system will do by totally randoming a pet through the /roll system.

Another example is low level hunters; technically they're filled with restrictions right out of the gate just do to their level (nevermind what the owner might not want), but I would never deny one (especially considering how many of my lowbies have done this). I like seeing the low level hunters because I feel that they have more of a challenge to tame some of their pets than the higher levels do sometimes. I'm still very proud of soloing most of Deadmines on a level 20 BM hunter with a bear just for one of the green parrots. XD It was hard as hell to do!

And I suppose choosing pets by hand isn't necessarily utterly horrible; after all, you guys wouldn't know if they were rolled or picked as they're still random to you. It's just an OCD thing on my end that they don't feel as random and having a ton of limitations just makes me wonder if people are doing this for the wrong reasons or if they really know how this challenge is supposed to work. It's just a pet peeve thing.

Long rant aside: New rolls will probably come tomorrow.

[TygerDarkstorm]

Starkittens:
White Turtle


Sarantha:
Black Raptor


Nemestrinus:
White Worg

[Nemestrinus]

I was given the White Worg for the random pet challenge.

I first went to Duskwood to look for Lupos, but I had no luck finding him. So I headed to Dun Morogh and looked for Timber.
Taming him was quite easy at my level.



I do like how the worgs look, but the dark border around this one is just a little bit of an eyesore. Just a little bit. I still like Timber!





Timber and I went into Shadowfang Keep with a couple people. The wolf 5% crit increase is awesome, and everything went well!



I decided to keep Timber. I put him in my stable, and I probably won't be using him anytime soon - but definitely keeping Timber with me for now.

[Finduilas]

I feel sorry for doing this report so late, but I had to write several essays for university and really didn't feel in the mood for the review.
Here is my report on the dark brown bear.
I went to look for him in Ashenvale and couldn't find a single one until I looked them up on wowhead. He was the only one I could find in this area and looked pretty lonely. I tamed him and named him Muffin, because I think his color is like a chocolate muffin

Appearance:

Muffin is a good looking pet. For a vanilla pet, his features are very detailed and smooth. His fur has such a nice dark brown color while on his head he has some lighter brown which shows off his eyes well. I like his big paws and his whole body, but I have the same issue with him like with my druid in bearform. It just looks like he is always hunched down with his head down and the butt up. Looking at him (or my druid) from behind, you always only see a big butt and almost nothing else. I want to make all wow-bears stand up straight!
The other thing that bothered me a little is his muzzle. Muffin looks like he has a constant sneer on his face and this makes him quite ugly at a close up look. Other pets open and close their mouths, why can't he do the same?



Animations and sounds:

Muffin and other bears share their animations with druid bears. The rear up on their legs while doing their special ability "Demoralizing roar" and attack with paw swipes and bites. It is cute to watch him fight. He gets all the "big bad protector". While doing my molten front dailies with him he glitched so he seemed to be fighting in the air, and you can see his "big evil bear is going to eat you" manner.
His idle animation is to look from side to side while opening his maw threatening as if to scare off any enemy hiding in the bushes.
Swimming with him is pretty cute: he paddles like I imagine a bear swimming and FINALLY gets his back straight. Must be a relief for him to be in the water after being hunched down all the day.
His other ability besides "demoralizing roar" is "rest". Before happiness was removed from our pets his rest restored a small amount of pet happiness (Petopia still says it), but I checked my tooltip and it just says "You command your bear to take a rest", which means he lies down and takes a nap.
Muffin's sounds are amazing: lots of roaring and growling. Everything I expect from my personal protector.



Fighting:

I specced Muffin towards a tank and did lots of dailies with him. I didn't take him to a dungeon or a battleground, because I prefer cunning or ferocity pets for these tasks. Muffin is a great tank. His roar helps him to keep the aggro of several mobs together with thunderstomp. This roar reduces the physical damage done by his opponents by 10% which takes quite some damage off him. I never had to heal Muffin, he did just fine with Silverback, Great Stamina, Grace of the Mantis and Pet Barding among his talents. I turned of his roar and Thunderstomp for the molten front, because he tended to get the attention of every mob running around there, but he still did a good job.

Conclusion:

I love bears to do the tanking job for my hunters. Some hunters of mine have a turtle others have a bear and I really can't tell which one I like more. People get into heated arguments about hunters using bears/turtles but I like both. I like Muffin's appearance a lot, despite his constant sneer, and his animations are nice, too. I won't keep him with Finduilas, because she already has a turtle I love, but perhaps I will get him on Larkania, who used to have a bear like Muffin and released him some time ago.
Finally I saw my first Anthriss alive when I finished my dailies with Muffin. I never saw her before and it made me feel good, to have seen her at least once.


Next roll please:

Name: Larkania (Tauren)
Level: 85
Exotics: yes
Restrictions: no diseased pets please
Rares she has: Gondria, Ban'thalos, Shadowclaw, Arcturis, Solix, Old Cliff Jumper, Blue Madexx - but will report them happily if rolled for me!

I will leave out again which pets I was already assigned, will review them again if rolled If you want me to, I can edit the list in later.

[Sarantha]

Black raptor. Took me a bit to get to it, since raptors always seem really boring to me, but he turned out to be really cute for a dino. I tamed a venomhide in Ungoro while helping a friend. He looks truly psychotic or mentally unbalanced in half of these pics. Truly the goofiest looking pet I've ever tamed. Pics:



During tame. He looks truly goofy and loony here, which is where his name comes from:



After tame, from the side:



From the front. This is a priceless pic...he looks NOTHING like a raptor here. I just LOL'd when I saw this shit:



Loony and Sara:



Seriously, weirdest pet ever. I do not really like raptors much, but they're a lot better than other pets I've tamed. The goofy front shots had me laughing the entire time I had this guy. Loony is really the perfect name for this guy. His animations are just jumping and attacking whatever is in front of him. His special ability is a 4% armor decrease, which isn't too bad and it stacks. He's still not my favorite pet and I think he'll be going back to the wilds of Un'goro with his really goofy looks and all.

Name: Sarantha
Level: 85
Exotics: Yes
Restrictions: No monkeys/gorillas, rhinos, or bats.

[TygerDarkstorm]

Finduilas(Larkania):
Color-Changing Monkey


Sarantha:
Blue Nether Ray


Sorry these rolls came so late--I haven't really had the time to log into WoW this week.

[krania]

Finally getting to my post, this one will be more detailed then my other one though.

Alright, I got a Sapphire Hive Wasp from Sholazar, and personally, I think this wasp looks SO cute. And I know, I'm weird.
So here's my pic of taming:

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And the first pic of us together:

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We ran heroic magister's terrace for a chance at the mount or pet, but no drop, nice pics though!

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We had a good time!

Swim animation was alright, but is pretty much a slow flight animation, nothing too exciting there.

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Dps was fairly good, but she dies pretty easily.

Smile for the camera, Azura!

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She has a pretty nice pattern on her back.

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Say goodbye, Azura!

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Come on, Azura! Say bye to the nice people!

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...Sorry about that.

Well, I really enjoyed having Azura, but I can't keep her, stable space is short.

Roll me again! And this time I swear I won't take too long!

Name: Krania
Level:85
Exotics: Sure.
Restrictions: I'm fine to try anything.

[starkittens]

I really don't feel like taking pics atm...

My tame was the white turtle. They are found out in the waters of Azshara as well as ghost lands. They are some of the best tanks for the lower lv hunters. For me, he wasn't very useful. His fight was simple, He just reaches his neck out and bites. blah. His special is a shell protect. useful at lower lvs. honestly, i don't like the white turtle, very blah. White shell, white skin, blah. i let him go.

All they way up there. His blahness will not plague me no more!

Again?
name:Starkittens
Level:85
Exotics:Sure.
Restrictions: No turtles, or spirit beasts. I will do loque though.

[Sarantha]

Blue Nether Ray. Not too fond of these pets. They're pretty, and I did tame one, but I find them to be quite useless (special is interrupting casting, completely useless to anyone not farming caster mobs). Anyway, here are a few pics:





Front after tame. Not very pretty at all. Her teeth look like that alien from the movie:



She's more attractive from the back. Very sparkly:



Luna and Sara:



Can't say much about Nether Rays. All colors but gold are unattractive and boring. I did tame a gold one for fun after this, and I really like her a lot more than this blue one. My gold one is also named Luna. The ray attack motions are just slapping the mobs with their tail, and their swimming animation is similar to flying. All in all, kind of a bleh pet. I wouldn't go out of my way to tame one (except gold) and they aren't the greatest dps best for cunning either.

Name: Sarantha
Level: 85
Exotics: Yes
Restrictions: No monkeys/gorillas or bats. Removed rhinos because I finally decided they looked interesting.

[TygerDarkstorm]

I have a request to make of you Star, and to some extent, Sarantha; even if you guys absolutely hate a pet, can you please try to give more full reviews? I don't want this to sound mean or anything, but it *is* considered a challenge and there are guidelines to at least try to somewhat follow. I know what it's like to loathe a pet and not stand it being next to you, but both of you have given better reviews in the past.

Also Star, even your RP-style reviews are a tad short--your former reviews felt more in depth than the single paragraph your more story oriented ones have been. Not to sound conceited, but if you want an example of a more RP style pet review, I've got a couple in here somewhere you can read.

Krania:
Gray Corehound


Starkittens:
Blue Rhino


Sarantha:
White Eagle

[Raziella]

Name: Raziella
Level: 85
Exotics: Yes!
Restrictions: No monkeys or gorillas